As is known, a tire tread has to meet a large number of often conflicting technical requirements, including a low rolling resistance, a high wear resistance, and a high grip on both the dry road and the wet road.
This compromise in properties, in particular from the viewpoint of the rolling resistance and the wear resistance, has been improved in recent years with regard to energy-saving “Green Tires”, intended in particular for passenger vehicles, by virtue in particular of the use of novel low hysteresis rubber compositions having the feature of being reinforced predominantly by specific inorganic fillers, described as reinforcing fillers, in particular by highly dispersible silicas (HDSs), capable of rivaling, from the view point of reinforcing power, conventional tire-grade carbon blacks.
Further improvements of the rolling resistance and/or the wear resistance remain however a constant concern of the tire designers.